Salt and Iron
by anthrop
Summary: "Yeah, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you got the jump on me with a plain old crowbar and a condiment."


**Edit 20 Oct 13:** This story will **not** be continued. It was practice for writing my first serious attempt at a crossover and my first attempts at the Winchesters. Please stop asking, begging, and/or demanding more. Calling me names is a dick move and does not endear me to your interest for more SuperPhantom. If you really want to know what happens next, write it yourself.

_Author's Note: Crossposted from AO3. Everybody likes a little SuperPhantom, right?_

* * *

Sometimes he swore he had the worst luck. Without fail, ever since the lab accident that had infused him with ghost DNA, his life had been nothing but ghost fighting, running from the government, and saving the world. Every summer vacation had been ruined by some huge catastrophe or another, but this year was _supposed_ to be different. It was _supposed_ to just be a boring family vacation road tripping up the California coast. It was _supposed_ to be sightseeing and theme parks and a million embarrassing family photos; it _was_ Jazz's last summer before she went off to college, after all.

(Of course it wasn't just going to be their dad doing the embarrassing!)

But of course, his luck just _had_ to have a laugh at his expense. It wasn't a summer vacation without mortal peril, apparently.

First there was the King Kong ghost at Universal Studios Hollywood, and then there was the trio of biker ghosts on the way to Disneyland. The Yeti of the Matterhorn turned out to be one of the Far Frozen and very nearly blew his cover. Twice. Then, just as Danny had begun to relax, the ghost of a disgruntled employee at Six Flags Magic Mountain very nearly rocketed his family off of The Riddler's Revenge.

(After that, Danny politely asked if the Fenton Family Vacation could maybe skip theme parks for the rest of the trip.)

Lunch and a walk around Morro Bay's famous Rock nearly saw his sister Jazz pecked to death by a flock of ghostly seagulls while he was napping in the RV, and Hearst Castle had no less than _seventeen_ ghosts that took some offense or another at Danny's presence. Inexplicably, ghosts attacked at three of the nine pit stops they made to enjoy the view of the Pacific. He decided that elephant seals were a lot more horrifying when they could fly.

_Finally_ they made it to Monterey, and their first few hours there were blissfully normal. They ate lunch at a kitschy, overpriced tourist trap and walked around downtown before heading back to the RV for a late afternoon nap. Danny however, felt restless and fidgety. The weather was cool and overcast, and it looked like a fog might roll in with the rain. Perfect weather for someone who wanted to stretch their ghost tails and not get caught.

Jack and Maddie Fenton had hemmed and hawed, but allowed him to "go for a walk," just as long as he didn't go far. Far, of course, was pretty relative when he clocked 200 miles per hour without breaking a sweat the last time Tucker tested him.

He had thought there would be a little reprieve from ghost hunting, at least for a day. Maybe that would have been the case, if he hadn't let himself drift north, idly following the fog. If he'd just spun slow circles over downtown Monterey, his ghost sense might never have gone off.

As it was, a shiver ran down his spine above a shopping complex edged in by coastal dunes darkened by pink and green succulents. His ghost sense led him across the freeway to what looked like a stretch of abandoned military housing straight out of the 40s. Invisibly, he flew lower. Nothing caught his eye, not at first. Then, between two boarded-up buildings he caught a glimpse of something blue and moving fast.

He flicked his tail and followed after.

It lost him twice, but he finally caught up to it in an old bunker eaten up by sea salt and the endless, whistling wind. The whole place was eerily quiet, not a whisper of humans for miles.

The ghost turned out to be a woman, her thin white dress scarcely paler than her skin and straw-white hair. Her eyes were very dark, and very sad.

"Hi there," he said, picking his way carefully across the debris-strewn floorboards. He always preferred to try the friendly approach first. When it actually worked, it usually ended up with less destruction. He didn't think any of these old buildings would handle more than a couple ghost rays at most before collapsing.

The woman, framed by the glassless window behind her, turned to fully face him. "Stay with me," she said softly.

"Sorry, lady." He shrugged, aiming for charming-or harmless, at least. "I don't think my girlfriend would appreciate it if I shacked up with a strange ghost in a, uh, shack."

Her frown was somewhere between confused and hurt. "Please. I'm so lonely here. Stay with me."

"Listen," he said, holding up his empty hands, "I'm sure you're very nice and all, but even if Sam didn't kill me-and that's a big if-my parents wouldn't rest until they found me. You'd much rather deal with me than them, trust me." He laughed. "They're a lot more, ah, the shoot first, dissect later than I am."

White light bloomed in the woman's hands and eyes. "Stay with me," she hissed.

"Nope. No can do. Tell ya what though, I can give you a ride back to the Ghost Zone if you'd like."

She screamed, launching herself into the air. She screamed again as blue-white light exploded across the room, sucking her into the Fenton Thermos held open in Danny's hands. He spun the cap on tightly and sighed. "Or I can make sure you get to the Ghost Zone whether you like it or not."

He had no time to turn before a shotgun blasted fire into his spine, and he cried out, dropping the Thermos. There was shouting behind him, two men, but his ears rang too loudly for him to pick out clean words. He rocked, twisted to face his attackers, and got another blast to the chest for bothering.

Whatever they nailed him with was _very_ effective on top of being incredibly painful. He couldn't phase his chest-bullets? Were they hitting him with anti-ghost bullets?-but he could still fly, so he jumped into the aired and aimed dizzily for a window.

Something thin and very, very hard hit his temple, and Danny Phantom was out like a light.

* * *

When he woke up he tied to a chair. His chest and back and head all ached, thankfully without the strobe his heartbeat would give it when he became a human again. He couldn't help the groan when he rolled his stiff neck, but he was alone.

He was in a different house, one with cleaner floors and a view of nothing but gray skies. The light rain had stopped at some point while he'd been unconscious. Someone had spray painted a circle and a lot of squiggly bits in black paint around his chair, and around that circle was a second one of-salt?

He looked down at himself. His jumpsuit was pockmarked with little green holes, an easy couple dozen. He could feel whatever they had shot him with rub his ectoplasm the wrong way and grimaced. "Great," he muttered to himself. "I've been kidnapped by old fashioned ghost hunters."

Voices neared the doorway, and Danny quickly feigned unconsciousness.

"-never see anything like 'im."

"Possession, maybe?"

"Wonder how long a spectre's gotta possess ya for you to bleed ectoplasm."

"I don't think he's a spectre."

"Green ectoplasm."

"Yeah, I know, but spectre are all, y'know, wrath and vengeance and murder. You heard him talking to the woman in white. He was trying to calm her down. Hell, he was cracking jokes."

"Right, then explain the lightshow and her sudden disappearance."

"I dunno. That light though, didn't it look a little-holy to you?"

"So, what-you thinkin' we bagged ourselves a green-blooded angel?"

"Maybe?"

"Nah, not even an angel'd get caught in that getup he's in. Demon? A powerful one, or one that's been wearing the same meatsuit for a millennium or two?"

Danny laughed. He couldn't help it. "You can't seriously be having this conversation," he said as he raised his head to look at his captors. "Angels and demons aren't real."

The men, both white and brown-haired, were dressed in plaid and denim. The shorter one had a loose but obviously experienced grip on a short-barreled shotgun, while the taller held a crowbar at his side. Neither of them looked particularly pleased to see him awake.

"Yeah, actually, they are." said the shorter one, stepping to the edge of the salt circle. From a pocket he pulled a silver hip flask, popped the lid off with his thumb, and emptied the whole thing in Danny's face.

Danny squinted through the water dripping from his hair. "Was that holy water," he deadpanned.

"Yes?"

"Okay, wow. We're done here." Danny phased through the ropes (Seriously? Rope?) binding him to the rickety wooden chair (Wood? _Seriously?_) and stood. "It's been real, guys, but it's time I left. So if you could just give me back my Thermos I'll leave you to whatever you were-ow!" He jumped back to the center of the circle, staring down at his smoking boot with rising alarm.

The taller man brandished the crowbar and in one step crossed the distance between them. He jabbed Danny in the chest experimentally with barely enough force to push. Danny didn't bother to dodge or even phase such a weak poke and immediately wished he had. Even through his thick jumpsuit the touch of it _burned_. Wordlessly he shouted pain and jumped into the air. An invisible barrier pinned him in on all sides, burning his fingers where he pried at it. The barrier-how the crap was a salt circle even a _barrier_-somehow stretched above him; he could touch the cracked ceiling but not pass through it. Ten feet above something he'd put on his scrambled eggs and he was still trapped.

"_What_," he snarled.

They looked up at him, eyebrows raised in matching expressions of bemusement.

"Some ghost," breathed the taller one.

Danny shot back down to their level, igniting his fists with neon green light. "Let me go." He spoke slowly, spitting out every word. "Or I start shooting."

"I hate to break it to you, Spiderman, but as long as you're in that circle your juice is nothin' but a fancy lightshow." The shorter man's grin as just about the smuggest Danny had ever seen, and he _dearly_ wanted to fire a plasma blast into the guy's face. Jerk or not, however, he was still only human. Humans and hot plasma didn't mix well.

He settled for blowing up the floor instead.

* * *

Danny woke up in a third room, circular this time, with concrete floors. The circle of paint still shined wetly in some places. He tried to move and hissed in pain. They'd soaked the ropes and chair in saltwater this time.

He heard footsteps approaching his makeshift cell, and he put on a pinched grin. "Let's try this again," he said with forced pleasantness. "Hi there! My name is Danny, and you are?"

"...Sam," said the taller one, then pointed. "That's my brother, Dean."

"Hi Sam! Hi Dean! Well gosh, now that we all know each other how about we _stop shooting Danny full of rock salt?_"

"Hey," snapped Dean. "You started it with the woman in white."

"Uh, no-oo, I'm _pretty_ sure you shot me in the back."

Sam interrupted Dean before he could retaliate. "Yeah, actually, we were wondering just how you destroyed her."

Danny blinked. "Destroyed? Who said anything about destroyed?"

"Well how else do you get rid of a dangerous ghost?"

"She isn't dangerous, she's just lost and confused!"

Dean looked ready to step inside the salt circle and start throwing punches, now that Danny would have minded the excuse to punch back. "Oh yeah? Tell that to her dead kid and the four guys she murdered."

Danny swallowed. "O-ok, fine. She isn't harmless. But I didn't destroy her."

"Where is she then?"

"Safe."

Dean raised an eyebrow. "What is she, your girlfriend or something?" He glanced at his brother. "Can ghosts even have girlfriends?"

"_Ugh_, no, she looked old enough to be my _mom_."

"Well, y'know what they say about older women."

"Dude, I'm _seventeen_." He looked at Sam. "Is your brother always this obnoxious or is it a recent development?"

"Hey!"

Sam ignored Dean and took a step closer to the salt line. His hands were empty. "Look-Danny, right? I'm not trying to be rude here, but what _are_ you? My brother and I, we've seen a lot of crazy things but nothing ever in your league."

"Yeah, well, you're not gonna see too many ghosts like me around." Danny shifted nervously in his ropes, hissing when the salt bit through his suit.

Sam's eyebrows nearly touched his hairline. "So you are a ghost?"

"Um, boo?" He wiggled his fingers half-heartedly, but couldn't help a slight grin. "I prefer Phantom though."

Dean nudged Sam. "So kid, where's the woman in white?"

"Like I said, she's safe. She won't hurt anybody else."

"I think you should tell us," Dean pulled the Fenton Thermos out of a pocket in his jacket, "Or we're going to have to burn this."

"_What?_ No!" As soon as he said that, Danny knew he'd made some kind of mistake.

"This is what's keeping you here, isn't it?" Dean tossed it lightly into the air. His fingers very nearly brushed the release button, and Danny felt himself tense. There were a _lot_ of ghosts squashed in there. "You know," Dean continued lightly, "we burn this and whoever's meatsuit you've been riding in gets returned to its rightful owner."

"Where do you two even _get_ this information? That's not going to work on me, but I still _really_ think you shouldn't burn that."

"How can you be sure?" Sam shrugged. "You seemed pretty surprised by our salt circle."

"Yeah, I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that you got the jump on me with a plain old crowbar and a _condiment_."

Danny expected another quip from Dean, but instead found himself looking down the barrel of the shotgun again. "Look, Phantom, I ain't playin'. Kid or not you're still a ghost, and we know what to do when it comes to ghosts." His grin failed to reach his eyes. "We give 'em the ol' salt and burn."

"What am I now, a steak?"

The shotgun blast left his ears ringing and his chest full of burning green holes. He spasmed against his bonds, screaming through gritted teeth. Salt. Freaking _salt_. His parents were going to be so mad when he told him how much money they could have saved if they'd just used _freaking salt_.

"So," Dean said once Danny had stopped squirming, "I'm only gonna ask this once: whose meatsuit are you wearing?"

"Nobody's! Mine!"

The two brothers shared another pointed look. "You're going to have to pick one," Sam said.

"Crap."


End file.
